AWS continues to invest in AMD's Epyc platform

[Evernessince]

Never said their wasn't ground. I'm just reminding you EPYC right now still isn't the overall winner against Xeons, no matter what Intel charges for them.

I'm no expert, but I don't see RTG being successful in the long run given its history and current marketshare, and AMD should look to sell and focus on CPU's and maybe consoles if Navi isn't a home run.

I will add that a big company like Amazon is a huge deal. They need a metric ton of CPUs and can't afford to poke the bear that is Intel without knowing that they are covered. Intel used to not so subtly imply that it might be hard to get enough Intel chips if they decide to start using competitor's products. Heck they in all likelihood still do. Nvidia did the same thing with it's board partners recently and the GPP. Either you signed on and agreed to the rules or you got reduced chip allotment.

So really going 40% AMD chips for Amazon is a message right across Intel's bow saying that Intel no longer holds the upper hand and that they trust AMD will continue to deliver.

Intel can not charge whatever they want for Xeons. They can charge companies who want to upgrade existing platforms a bit more and companies who have software designed specifically for Intel processors but that's about it. Otherwise if the company needs to rollout 2,000 more servers and the Intel models cost twice as much, perform worse, have higher power consumption (and thus higher energy and cooling costs), and have lower density (thus increasing cost due to the additional required space) I don't see a reason why any company wouldn't consider rolling out EPYC servers instead. Zen 2 will give AMD all those advantages and Zen+ already gives most of them. It hits a point where the TCO of the Intel processors just becomes so ridiculous in comparison that if you do have Intel optimized software, you'd saved a ton of money by going AMD and getting your software team on optimizing for AMD. Software developers get paid good money but it won't make a dent in the amount you'd save from having access to AMD hardware.

If you had said this before the many security flaws I would have agreed with you. Intel had consistency. Now? Now the enterprise has to deal with tons of security holes and massive drops in performance. 33% from a single patch. Who knows when the all the exploits will be fixed and the performance drop they will come with. That's not good for business.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

How long can AMD keep it up is the question. I know I come off as an AMD hater, but they need consistency before I can get excited.

keep it up? AMD pulled this off while they were down, imagine what they can do once they're back on their feet!

AMD is down in the single digit percentage points on per-core performance. AMD is DESTROYING Intel on core density. AMD can pack twice as many cores in a 1U server rack as Intel and in multithreaded workloads, that's all that matters. 128 intel cores to 128 AMD cores, Intel performance gains are less than 10% and costs about 4X as much. For half the cost of an Intel setup you can have twice as many AMD cores. Or, simply put(In the layest of layman terms) you can get an 80% performance increase over an intel setup for half the cost in workloads where core count, threads and PCIe bandwidth are the key factors.

We have seen this before. AMD succeeds massively in one area while ignoring others. Right now that is RTG, which is woefully behind nvidia. When AMD eventually begins to shift resources back to RTG, their CPU line will suffer.

This happened with Phenom I, this happened with bulldozer. Now we are seeing it happen again, with the question of "will AMD manage to not screw it up this time?". Ryzen is doing well, but they need to keep the pressure on while revitalizing RTG to convince me they are not going to drop the ball on Zen2, like they have twice before in the last 15 years.

 

[wiyosaya]

How long can AMD keep it up is the question. I know I come off as an AMD hater, but they need consistency before I can get excited.

keep it up? AMD pulled this off while they were down, imagine what they can do once they're back on their feet!

AMD is down in the single digit percentage points on per-core performance. AMD is DESTROYING Intel on core density. AMD can pack twice as many cores in a 1U server rack as Intel and in multithreaded workloads, that's all that matters. 128 intel cores to 128 AMD cores, Intel performance gains are less than 10% and costs about 4X as much. For half the cost of an Intel setup you can have twice as many AMD cores. Or, simply put(In the layest of layman terms) you can get an 80% performance increase over an intel setup for half the cost in workloads where core count, threads and PCIe bandwidth are the key factors.

We have seen this before. AMD succeeds massively in one area while ignoring others. Right now that is RTG, which is woefully behind nvidia. When AMD eventually begins to shift resources back to RTG, their CPU line will suffer.

This happened with Phenom I, this happened with bulldozer. Now we are seeing it happen again, with the question of "will AMD manage to not screw it up this time?". Ryzen is doing well, but they need to keep the pressure on while revitalizing RTG to convince me they are not going to drop the ball on Zen2, like they have twice before in the last 15 years.

There is one huge difference between the Bullcrap AMD and now. Then, CEO was Rory Reed; now, CEO is Lisa Su.

Rory Reed could not spell the word technology if you handed him a dictionary and he looked it up. Lisa Su is, by far, a genius in comparison to Rory Reed.